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At the Intersection of Torah and Current EventsWed, 13 Dec 2017 22:29:59 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1https://cross-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/cc-fav-150x150.pngCross-Currentshttps://cross-currents.com
3232Moving Commentary 2https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/13/moving-commentary2/
https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/13/moving-commentary2/#respondWed, 13 Dec 2017 22:08:51 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16213With huge thanks to HKBH, we arrived here two days ago. Lots of things to get done, and I have no intention of boring people. But I will offer it as an excuse for...

]]>With huge thanks to HKBH, we arrived here two days ago. Lots of things to get done, and I have no intention of boring people. But I will offer it as an excuse for doing things in a strange order. It is my intention, BEH, to write a few pieces on why we decided to make the move. (We have been challenged by a good number of people about this!) Meanwhile, I might throw in some anecdotes and impressions,as they occur.

Like this one, after some preliminary shopping for necessities at Rami Levy this afternoon. I couldn’t help but contrast the experience with shopping at my familiar Ralph’s market in LA. The most important differences:

1) In Yerushalayim, I was conscious of being surrounded by people speaking a language that was not my most facile. In Los Angeles, I was more and more frequently surrounded by people whose language I did not understand at all.
2) The aisles at Rami Levy are actually wider than at Ralph’s. (OK, the lines were twice as long as well. But the new plastic bag law, copied from the one we had in California, I suppose, is a better deal than in the States. Ten bags for a single shekel!)
3) The PA announcements are different. Waiting on line, someone came on and announced that because of the proximity to shekiah, there would soon be a minyan for mincha (afternoon pra. People interested should go immediately to the shul – in a side room of the store!

]]>https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/13/moving-commentary2/feed/0Not Being Accepted as a Female Rabbi, and #MeToohttps://cross-currents.com/2017/12/13/not-accepted-female-rabbi-metoo/
https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/13/not-accepted-female-rabbi-metoo/#commentsWed, 13 Dec 2017 20:53:36 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16208In a recent New York Daily News article, Rabba Sara Hurwitz, one of the two female clergy members at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (HIR) and dean of Yeshivat Maharat, which is housed at HIR,...

]]>In a recent New York Daily News article, Rabba Sara Hurwitz, one of the two female clergy members at Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (HIR) and dean of Yeshivat Maharat, which is housed at HIR, writes that:

… the Orthodox Jewish community is also a male-dominated “locker-room” where women are harassed, demeaned and marginalized.

When women are shut out of leadership positions, silenced — and, worse, made invisible — it is easy to objectify us…

Some congregants even left the synagogue when I was ordained, despite there being no Jewish law that prohibits women from assuming clergy roles.

Before even getting to the substance of the matter, it is a chillul Hashem and quite damaging for someone to malign the Orthodox community in a secular paper read by a very wide audience of gentiles and non-Orthodox Jews. If the author had a complaint against the Orthodox community, why was that complaint not shared within the Orthodox community, rather than being aired before millions of outside readers, many of whom will now have one more reason to shun Orthodox Judaism and to dislike Orthodox Jews? Not to mention the fact that sharing these blistering accusations against an entire community with those who cannot do anything about the matter constitutes a profound case of lashon ha-ra…

Ms. Hurwitz in large part bases her allegations of harassment, marginalization and being shut out on a rejection of female rabbinic status, adding that “my experiences are shared by other ordained Orthodox women in leadership positions, who have told me stories of being marginalized or having crude and insensitive comments directed at them. “

As bad as these insults may have been, they have nothing to do with sexual harassment. And for Ms. Hurwitz to equate rejection of female clergy and concomitant (and unacceptable) personal disparagement with sexual harassment is a grave insult to the problem of sexual harassment. In fact, Ms. Hurwitz’ argument not only demeans sexual harassment, but it further unfairly accuses those who do not agree with her professional religious path (notwithstanding the nasty way that these people may have expressed their feelings) as enabling a culture of sexual harassment.

People need to act with derech eretz, but not every insult is a manifestation of sexual harassment.

Moreover, when people do not accept the concept of female clergy, it is not based on chauvinism, but on broad-based, consensus rulings from the generation’s preeminent halachic authorities, who have stated in no uncertain terms that women may not serve as Jewish clergy. (Please see this RCA resolution, which specifies that women may neither be ordained nor hired by Orthodox institutions as clergy, and this OU rabbinic panel ruling, which states that synagogues should not appoint women to serve as clergy.) Ms. Hurwitz is well aware of these rulings, yet she disingenuously presents the issue of female clergy as clearly permissible, and then proceeds to use rabbinic rejection of female clergy as a basis for claims of harassment. For shame.

This Chanukah season, let us instead take lesson from the Chashmona’im, who fought for Divine truth, adherence to Torah standards and purity in Avodas Hashem.

I write on behalf of Agudath Israel of America, a national Orthodox Jewish organization, to register outrage over the recent reported comments of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who ludicrously called Israel – the only true democracy and humanitarian country in the Middle East – a “terrorist state” that “kills children.”

Compounding the absurdity of that charge was Mr. Erdoğan’s ahistorical assertion that “Jerusalem was ruled by Muslims for many centuries but never closed to the believers of the other religions during that time.” It is clearly documented that, at least from 1948 until 1967, Islamic authorities and Jordan prevented Jews and Christians from visiting their holy sites in the Old City, including the Western Wall. And it is well known and entirely evident that Israel provides access to all religious sites within its territory. To claim the opposite is nothing less than an attempt to create false “facts.”

Mr. Erdoğan’s further assertion that “Jerusalem is the worshipping center for mainly Muslims, Christians, and partially Jews” betrays not only further deep ignorance but even deeper prejudice.

Such baseless and incendiary rhetoric has become commonplace among barbaric enemies of peace who in fact murderously target innocents as a matter of policy. That such language now emerges from the mouth of a head of state is utterly contemptible.

Turkey for many years represented a voice of sanity and responsibility in a region cursed with delusion and violence. It is unfortunate, indeed tragic, that recent years have seen it influenced by the worst elements around it.

]]>Truth Is Attractivehttps://cross-currents.com/2017/12/09/truth-is-attractive/
Sun, 10 Dec 2017 04:43:12 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16199It wasn’t a phone call the head of the Union for Reform Judaism ever wanted to get. Taglit-Birthright was calling, with bad news. In the U.S., the “Taglit” (“discovery”) part of the name of...

]]>It wasn’t a phone call the head of the Union for Reform Judaism ever wanted to get. Taglit-Birthright was calling, with bad news.

In the U.S., the “Taglit” (“discovery”) part of the name of the non-profit organization that sponsors free ten-day trips to Israel for Jewish young adults is usually dropped; it is known simply as “Birthright.”

Founded in 1994 by two philanthropists, Wall Street money manager Michael Steinhardt and former Seagram Company chairman Charles R. Bronfman, Birthright is financed by them and other private donors, as well as by the Israeli government. More than 500,000 young people, mostly from the U.S. and Canada, have participated in the program to date.

The recent phone call was to inform the Reform leader that his movement was no longer authorized as a certified trip provider for Birthright. It wasn’t, the caller explained, because Birthright had anything against “progressive” Jewish groups, but rather a simple matter of the fact that the Reform movement had failed to meet participant quotas.

“We worked very hard with them to increase the numbers,” Birthright CEO Gidi Mark told an Israeli newspaper, “but unfortunately they could not meet our minimum.”

Although the overwhelming majority of Birthright participants come from non-Orthodox backgrounds – less than 5 percent are Orthodox Jews – Orthodox-affiliated trip providers, including the Chabad-connected group “Mayanot,” the Orthodox Union’s “Israel Free Spirit” and Aish Hatorah account for close to a quarter of total recruitment.

Birthright’s largest single donor these days is Republican supporter Sheldon Adelson. He is a promoter of the Israeli political right wing with regard to security issues and the Palestinians, but is not Orthodox. Messrs. Bronfman and Steinhardt say, “We are both secular Jews… we never saw Birthright Israel as a religious trip, though many alumni have changed their ritual practices.”

So why have Orthodox groups emerged as so disproportionate a conduit of young non-Orthodox Jews to Birthright trips?

Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, who bemoans that fact, blames it on the Israeli government’s support for what he calls “Ultra-Orthodox campus institutions.” He also is upset that young people on Birthright trips are given the option, if they choose, to attend Orthodox services during their stay in Israel.

Reform leaders are also chagrined that, although “religious indoctrination” is prohibited on Birthright trips, the Orthodox groups also often later convince Birthright alumni to, in Rick Jacobs’ words, “explore a more traditional way of Judaism.” The horror.

Asked about Orthodox organizations’ outreach work with participants after the trips, Mr. Mark said: “We are dealing with people who are very intelligent. They are all mature people older than 18. I myself never heard any one complaint about any misuse of the relationship by our trip organizers.”

Rather than stew over the fact that nonobservant young Jews seem to gravitate to groups dedicated to “a more traditional way of Judaism” – or, put more accurately, the authentic mesorah of Klal Yisrael – Reform leaders might stop seeking culprits for that offense and consider the fact that emes is attractive.

Birthright certainly has never pushed Yiddishkeit in any way, and indeed shunned anything smacking of “religious indoctrination.”

It has helped ensure Jewish continuity by helping countless Jews connect in one or another way to their religious heritage by bringing them to Israel.

But for nearly 2000 years, visiting or settling in Eretz Yisrael was not even an option for most Jews. What sustained Jewish continuity over those millennia? Precisely Rick Jacobs’ “more traditional way of Judaism” – Jewish knowledge and Jewish living.

In fact, if Birthright really wanted to maximize its bang for the buck, it might consider dropping altogether its religious rejection of religion and consider a marvelous, gutsy move. Namely, amend Birthright’s existing program to maximize the Jewish impact of the gift it offers young Diaspora Jews, by providing them, say, for two or three of their ten days, an intensive Jewish learning experience in an Israeli yeshivah, seminary or outreach program catering to Jews from overseas.

Yes, that would violate the effort’s heretofore commitment to “pluralism.” But it would be entirely in consonance with Birthright’s professed goal, helping ensure Jewish continuity.

In fact, providing Jews who were raised distant from their religious heritage the opportunity to witness what it means to live a true Jewish life would be nothing less than, well, returning to them their birthright.

]]>Moving Commentary: An Occasional Travelogue 1https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/08/moving-commentary-occasional-travelogue-1/
https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/08/moving-commentary-occasional-travelogue-1/#commentsFri, 08 Dec 2017 08:10:43 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16196[Perhaps more for catharsis than anything else, I will BEH try from time to time to offer reflections on my move to Israel that might be of interest to some readers. To everyone else,...

]]>
[Perhaps more for catharsis than anything else, I will BEH try from time to time to offer reflections on my move to Israel that might be of interest to some readers. To everyone else, take this as a request to indulge my need to escape the difficulties of the day by banging at the keyboard.]

People matter; things don’t matter. Perhaps in some perfect world that is true, but the sentiment didn’t work for me. Closing up a house we had lived in for 37 years and raised all our kids was much harder than we thought. Maharal argues that property is an extension of our core selves. It certainly felt that way with each decision of what to put on the lift, what to give away, and what to discard. The movers who will place their catch on a container and give it over to a sea-faring vessel came a week ago. Yet, we were still not finished dealing with what is left over. It was a relief to find homes for (some of the) furniture that had no real resale value but was entirely functional. I’m still at a loss to understand why mere objects – most of which were taken for granted – should mean so much, should provide such a sense of security and belonging, which now was so rudely disrupted.

My rational self was greatly helped along by a thought of Rav Dessler – even if my heart didn’t quite keep up with the compelling logic. Chazal tell us that as Yaakov neared the border of Israel as he sought to return to his father’s house after over two decades, the angels of the Land came out to escort him. There are several beautiful explanations. Rav Dessler understands Chazal to be telling us about our possessions. At every stage of life, we are given the tools, the kelim, that are best suited to help us in our personal mission. If we achieve one of the goals along the way, we are given new equipment that is relevant to achieving the next goal. The angels of Eretz Yisrael that sought Yaakov out signified that the kelim he had been given for his years in the house of Lavan were now irrelevant to the next phase of his life. The angels would introduce him to the new set of items that he would use in the Holy Land. Parting with lots of things that had shaped my immediate environment became a bit easier when I reflected upon this. These things had been useful in the past; life in Israel would require a different set of items. The familiar items became obsolescent not because of their age, but because they no longer had a role in future avodah.

In one area, this did not work at all. We would be going from a 2400 sq. ft. house to a much smaller apartment. There would not be room for many, many of the seforim I had acquired over the decades. I had to divest myself of hundreds. It is one thing to get rid of familiar tchatchkes, but quite another to discard perfectly good seforim. A local outreach organization took a few score English works. But no one was interested is volumes in perfect shape, but that had become outdated because newer editions were available.

No one. We are so well-off that we treat seforim just a few years old like a dated iPhone: functional, but who wants it? The upshot is that I made many trips to a special container that Chabad provides for the community for sheimos. Nothing hurt more than to take precious Torah seforim – many in mint condition – and place them in that bin.

Shaul Stampfer in Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century describes the opening day of a new zman in Volozhin, where competition was severe simply to receive a copy of the mesechta that the yeshivah would learn in the coming months. There just were not a sufficient number of basic texts to go around.

We don’t fight anymore about who will be privileged to receive a borrowed gemara for a semester. In access to Torah texts, there is affluence even in the midst of poverty. This is a wonderful blessing, but it comes at a price. Arms that coddle a sefer should not have to let it go into a discard bin. We should have to treasure every sefer like a family heirloom – but we can’t, because we have so many. I don’t know what effect this has on our souls, on our appreciation of Torah itself. But I wonder about it.

And I realize that one of the reasons why I am drawn so strongly to make the move is to counter the conspicuous consumption of the West in so many other areas. While Israel is not that far behind, it is still a place where some simplicity is still obtainable, where not everything that exists is, to use the expression in vogue, “must-have.” It will be a struggle, but lowering the bar on expectation has to be, in the long run, good for the neshamah.

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm celebrates his ninetieth birthday in during Channuka of this year. Rabbi Lamm שליט”א life model makes him a figure worthy of examination across the spectrum of the Orthodox community. Although he himself was a champion of the classical torah umadda vision of Yeshiva University, his career and personality makes him worthy of study by the spectrum of the Orthodox community for three deeply important reasons. First, he led the resurgence of Yeshiva University as a central place to study torah – the YU under his predecessors was a much weaker Torah center than it was under Rabbi Lamm, both in terms of quality and quantity. Second, Rabbi Lamm modeled – much more than almost any of those around him – the art of presenting torah values to secular people: he did not preach to the choir. Third, he was comfortable speaking about those aspects of torah that secular people did not always enjoy reading about, and which did not reinforce western values — consider for example, his magisterial defense of hilchot nidah A Hedge of Roses, written in 1966 (yes, that is not a typo – in the middle of the sexual revolution) to a secular audience at a time when these topic were very unpopular in secular culture.

It is time to step back and appreciate of Rabbi Lamm’s unique and steady focus of Torah study, all the while remaining a public servant of Modern Orthodox Judaism. It is astonishing that the level of his deep personal commitment to regularly learning Torah and scholarship remained central to him. Further he was always going to write in Torah and share his torah scholarship with others.

Three aspects of this in Rabbi Lamm’s Torah life are deeply worthy of admiration.

First, no matter how deeply involved he was in the leadership of our community (and for many decades he was very centrally involved) he always had time to write serious thoughts on important matters of Torah. Even as President of YU, he wrote more than a dozen books and dozens of articles. Unlike every other President of Yeshiva, he both came to the job as a leading intellectual light of our community and left as a more accomplished light. This comes from his well-known deep inner self desire to learn: even being a public figure could not stand in the way of his desire to learn torah. Those of us who ever spent time with Rabbi Lamm saw that while he was a diligent public servant who saved many a Modern Orthodox institution – Yeshiva University particularly during the scary times ago decades ago – his eyes shown brightest and he was most animated when discussing learning and not finances or politics.

Second, and I heard this many years ago from Rabbi Lamm at an Orthodox Forum, ideas are for sharing with others: Rabbi Lamm was not a monastic scholar. “It is very hard to assess the value of your own ideas without sharing it with others”, Rabbi Lamm told me “and do not be afraid of critical feedback.” There is no reason to be afraid of that interaction with one’s intellectual peers and Rabbi Lamm relished letters written to him that critiqued his articles. Ideas need to be critically examined and it is rare that the first person who has a novel idea is the one best equipped to determine if the idea is right. Rabbi Lamm knew that and was not scared of this.

Third, Rabbi Lamm knew that there is a value in apologetics as a form of writing. Rabbi Lamm, while discussing his article on killing Amalek, notes that he “offers no apologies for this exercise in apologetics.” Rabbi Lamm believes that the written word served as an important vehicle for defending Torah and that there was nothing wrong with apologetics in this exercise of defense. Apologetics allows people to analyze a topic a topic with an announced religious agenda in hand, to explain to the reader why the results reached by Jewish law and lore were consistent with or at least mitigate, the moral and ethical problems caused by a simple understanding of halacha.

Rabbi Norman Lamm has reached the age of בֶּן תִּשְׁעִים לָשׁוּחwhich is commonly understood to mean the age of stooping over due to old age. I suspect, however, looking at how productive Rabbi Lamm has been in retirement from the Presidency of YU fourteen years ago (and four years ago as the Rosh Hayeshiva of YU) that the interpretation of the Teferet Yisrael will prove to be more correct. Teferet Yisrael writes that by the age of ninety, a person will only have the time to speak in Torah study and prayer, because his time for other matters is over. Since his retirement in 2003, Rabbi Lamm has published more than another dozen books and much more. When I last visited Rabbi Lamm in his apartment in Manhattan a few short months ago, he was sitting at his dining room table with a pile of books that he was reading and he was happy to share his thoughts in torah with me. I look forward to his continued writing in torah for another thirty years.

Our community would not be what it is now without him and he should enjoy his time now, when he is no longer a public servant, to just a ben torah. Happy Birthday, rebbe!

Rabbi Michael J. Broyde was twice ordained by Rabbi Lamm in his capacity as Rosh Yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and is a law professor at Emory University.

]]>https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/05/celebration-rabbi-norman-lamms-ninetieth-birthday/feed/3Gezunt or Glucophobia?https://cross-currents.com/2017/12/02/gezunt-or-glucophobia/
Sat, 02 Dec 2017 23:50:41 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16179Have you been following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s advice to drink three cups of milk a day, to get enough calcium and vitamin D? No? Good for you. Multiple studies show that there...

]]>Have you been following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s advice to drink three cups of milk a day, to get enough calcium and vitamin D? No? Good for you.

Multiple studies show that there is no association between drinking so much milk (or taking calcium and vitamin D supplements) and fewer bone fractures.

Do you take a multivitamin every day? No? Good for you. Decades of research have yielded no justification for healthy people taking vitamins.

Have you at least been cutting down on coffee and keeping it from your kids, so as not to stunt their growth? No, again? Well, good for you again.

Drinking a few cups a day, it turns out, has been linked to substantial health benefits; and most research finds no correlation between children’s caffeine consumption and their bone growth.

Every generation assumes that its conclusions about scientific matters are the last word, despite the fact that they often aren’t.

Sometimes, wrong conclusions are innocent and excusable, the products of tainted data, poorly designed experiments or human error.

Other times, though, misinformation is purposely fed to the public for particular parties’ financial gain. In the case of coffee, for instance, it was villainized largely by cereal manufacturer C.W. Post, in an effort to market his “Postum” product as an alternative to what he called “nerve poison” that should never be served to children.

Enter the revelation last week about sugar. Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, announced that they have uncovered documents demonstrating that, back in the 1960s, members of the sugar industry called off a study, named Project 259, because it linked sugar to heart disease and bladder cancer in preliminary experiments.

Last year, the same researchers discovered a document that showed the sugar industry funded a report that downplayed links between sugar and coronary heart disease.

UCSF dentist Cristin Kearns started digging into the sugar industry 10 years ago, after hearing representatives at a conference say there is “no scientific consensus” that sugar is linked to chronic illnesses. She combed through library archives across the nation and eventually came upon a box containing “confidential” documents on “Project 259.”

In 1968, the Sugar Research Foundation launched a rodent study, which measured the nutritional products of gut bacteria after rats consumed sucrose, as compared to starch.

The experiment’s early results showed that sucrose increased the poor animals’ levels of triglycerides, fatty molecules that, in humans, can clog arteries and predispose a person to heart attacks and strokes.

Another preliminary experiment in the project also found a high-sugar diet boosts the activity of an enzyme linked to bladder cancer.

After reporting this discovery in August, 1970 to the International Sugar Research Foundation, Project 259 scientists requested more time and funding to continue the research, the documents show. But the request was denied, and the project abandoned.

Dr. Kearns and UCSF cardiologist Stanton Glantz claim that the sugar industry tried to bury the evidence and stopped the project because of the negative findings.

A sugar industry spokesperson dismissed that claim as “a collection of speculations and assumptions about events that happened nearly five decades ago.” It also called the researchers “known critics of the sugar industry.” Glucophobics, as it were.

In 2004, a trial revealed that tobacco industry officials had intentionally deceived Americans for years into thinking that smoking did not cause cancer, despite having clear evidence to the contrary.

No trial is in the works at present for Big Sugar, but the parallel is there. Sugar might not smell bad or turn teeth yellow. But too much of it can, over time, be deadly.

The recent report isn’t the first to reveal the sugar industry’s machinations, either.

According to an analysis of historical documents published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, when studies first began linking sugar with heart disease, a sugar industry group paid Harvard researchers to write an article about the issue.

Published in 1967, it played down the effects of sugar and concluded that the only dietary intervention needed to prevent heart disease was reducing cholesterol and saturated fat. Which led to the decades-long, aggressive marketing of an assortment of “low fat” products – that, incidentally, contained more sugar than their regular counterparts.

The American Heart Association recommends that men consume less than 150 calories of added sugar per day; and women, less than 100.

There are 16 calories in a teaspoon of sugar. A 12-ounce can of regular soda contains about 9 teaspoons of sugar.

Do the math. And, remembering the Torah’s exhortation to guard our health, do the right thing for your health.

]]>Veiter Simchoshttps://cross-currents.com/2017/11/24/veiter-simchos/
Fri, 24 Nov 2017 18:57:52 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16173My brother, a rebbe in Yeshivas Ner Yisroel’s Mechina high school, and his wife, the daughter of the legendary Menahel Rav Yosef Tendler, z”l,were recently blessed with two new grandsons. Both were named Simcha...

]]>My brother, a rebbe in Yeshivas Ner Yisroel’s Mechina high school, and his wife, the daughter of the legendary Menahel Rav Yosef Tendler, z”l,were recently blessed with two new grandsons. Both were named Simcha Bunim, after my father, hk”m, whose first yahrtzeit will be observed on 20 Kislev.

When I wished my brother and his wife “veiter simchos!” – “further happy occasions! – I wondered if I had inadvertently uttered a double entendre. It turns out I did. My wife and I just returned from Milwaukee, where another bris took place, as our daughter and son-in-law welcomed their new little boy to their family; he, too, is a Simcha Bunim.

I’ve been thinking, as you might imagine, about the name.

Firstly, what exactly is “Bunim”? My father always assumed that it derived from Binyamin, and there are sources that indeed assert that. But another possibility was suggested to me by a brother-in-law’s brother, Tzvi West, who thinks (very plausibly, to me) that, like many double names (e.g. Zev Wolf, Dov Ber, Aryeh Leib…), “Simcha Bunim” may be a vernacular translation added to a Hebrew one. Because, in French, bonhomme means “a good-natured man” or “a man of good cheer.”

If that theory is right, though, both names are uncannily descriptive of my father.

He was renowned for his ready, radiant smile, and over the more than sixty years he served as a shul Rav, countless congregants and strangers alike were greeted with his sever panim yafos. He was a reservoir of friendly, encouraging words for all who sought his counsel.

But simchah isn’t only an interpersonal ideal. We exist for avodas Hashem. And Dovid Hamelech reveals that our lifelong service be done with simchah – ivdu es Hashem bisimchah. Jewish joy occupies a very high plane indeed.

I don’t know if my father was able to embrace simchah as he fled as a young teen with his family from their Polish town before the invading Nazis in 1939, or when he saw his uncle shot dead before him, or when he and other Jews were locked in a shul that was set aflame (though I imagine he must have smiled when a German army officer – Eliyahu Hanavi, the Jews suspected – passed by and ordered the Jews released). Or if he attained moments of joy during the years he and his Novardok chaverim spent as the guests of the Soviets in a Siberian work camp. But knowing Norvardok’s stress on making the most of every moment of life, it’s entirely plausible.

What I know for fact, though, is how Simchas Torah was his Yom Tov. He rejoiced then with vigor that left anyone who witnessed it astonished. And how delighted he was during his long career to be able to provide a spiritual home for a congregation of Yidden of widely diverse backgrounds and levels of observance.

When my siblings and I were young, it didn’t occur to us that a Rav davening all the Yamim Noraim tefillos (and blowing the shofar) himself was unusual. When, eventually, he trained others to daven for the amud, he took great joy in that, too, and always happily encouraged the new baalei tefillah.

He also undertook the most menial tasks of maintaining a shul with joy. The shul had no shamash, only a rabbi who saw honor in every shul chore.

A congregant recounted seeing him in the shul perched on a 20-foot ladder, changing a light bulb.

“What are you doing?” the man asked him. My father looked down and, wondering at the question, said, “changing a bulb.”

“I know. But why are you doing it?”

“Because the old one burned out,” he explained patiently, with his characteristic smile.

Leaving a neighbor’s shivah house five or six years ago, I was stopped by a gentleman who said he recognized me from a recent chasunah we had both attended, of a relative of mine (the man had a connection to the other family). I confirmed I had indeed been there. He then he took out his phone and said “I have to show you a short video from that chasunah. This zaken was dancing so gracefully, like a young bachur!”

My suspicion of what might be coming was borne out. The video was of my father, well into his 80s at the time, being mesame’ach the chassan and kallah with vigor and joy.

At present, he has five little boy descendants who carry his name (and one little girl who was named Simcha). May they, and, be”H, veiter simchos, herald a new infusion of joy into our world.

]]>Peter Beinart’s Orthophobiahttps://cross-currents.com/2017/11/21/peter-beinarts-orthophobia/
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 19:52:27 +0000https://cross-currents.com/?p=16169Below is my original draft of a piece I wrote for Forward. The article as it appeared there, though, was substantially edited, and several sentences that I think are important were omitted. So I...

Below is my original draft of a piece I wrote for Forward. The article as it appeared there, though, was substantially edited, and several sentences that I think are important were omitted. So I share the original here. The Forward piece can be read here.

Well, in case anyone for some reason may have been wondering, Peter Beinart, who recently wrote a piece titled “The Orthodox Should Know Better than to Embrace Hatred of Muslims,” doesn’t follow J.K Rowling on Twitter.

Because if the Forward senior columnist and former The New Republic editor did, he would have seen Harry Potter’s creator’s retweet last year of a haredi (or in the Forward’s pejorative preference, “ultra-Orthodox”) rabbi’s message.

The rabbi shared the fact that he had dedicated his presidential election vote to the American Muslim soldier Captain Humayun Khan – who was killed in combat and about whom his father Khizr spoke movingly at the Democratic National Convention. Then-candidate Donald Trump, of course, was then touting his “Muslim ban.”

The Hasidic rabbi, who serves as a media relations coordinator at the national Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America (full disclosure: I work there too), shared a photo of himself holding his ballot, alongside a photo of Captain Khan and his gravestone. He wrote that he wanted to highlight how Captain Khan’s “devotion makes (religious) freedom possible.”

The tweet was liked almost 12,000 times and retweeted 5,496 times, including Ms. Rowling’s sharing of the photo and message with her 13 million followers. Not one of whom, apparently, is Mr. Beinart, who wrote recently here that “the inability to distinguish jihadist terrorism from Islam fuels American Jewish hostility toward American Muslims” and that such inability is “particularly true among the Orthodox.”

Mr. Beinart must have also missed the story of the haredi director of a Brooklyn soup kitchen who, after the election, rallied support within his community for Muslim Yemeni neighbors who were protesting the new president’s executive order banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. The haredi also organized support for a beleaguered local Yemeni-owned bodega, complete with “Shalom/Salaam” posters.

Agudath Israel, moreover, issued a pro-immigration statement about the ban asserting that such a move is acceptable only if intended to prevent terrorists from entering the country, only “if tempered by true concern for innocent refugees” and only if “its focus is on places,… not on religious populations.”

Mr. Beinart could be forgiven for not knowing about the hassidic WhatsApp group that calls itself “Isaac and Yishmoel,” created to enable its members to defend unfairly maligned Muslims.

But some research on his part might have turned up the fact that Agudath Israel’s executive vice president chairs the Committee of New York City Religious and Independent School Officials, which includes representation from the Islamic School Association. And that he has worked with Islamic school representatives on a number of issues before the New York State Education Department. And that, on the national level, he works with Islamic school groups under the umbrella of the Council for Private Education.

Agudath Israel has also joined with Islamic groups in amicus briefs in religious liberty cases, and, along with the Orthodox Union, another major national group, has opposed “anti-sharia” laws.

Is there wariness about Muslims among many Orthodox Jews? Yes, as there is among many non-Orthodox ones, among many Episcopalians, Catholics and Hindus too. Is that fair to the vast majority of Muslim citizens, who have no evil designs? No. But, unfortunately, the proclaimed world-conquering designs of Islamists and the malevolent acts committed by extremists exist. The distrust that results is, unfortunately, the responsible Muslim’s unfair burden to bear.

But do Orthodox Jews hate Muslims or seek to harm them? Mr. Beinart should visit one of the Brooklyn neighborhoods where Orthodox Jews and Muslim immigrants live side by side, day by day without friction.

The Forward columnist compounds his slander of Orthodox Jews by engaging in some Orthophobia, in effect accusing haredim of preventing women from marrying, touting genocide and killing babies. Yes, you read right.

There isn’t space here to rebut such outlandishness. Suffice it to say that it is a high haredi ideal to find ways to compel a recalcitrant husband to agree to divorce his abandoned wife; that no people today can be identified with Amalek, and so the biblical injunction to destroy that evil nation cannot be applied; and that metzitza bipeh, the oral suction practiced by some haredim as part of the Jewish circumcision rite, has never been proven to be related to, much less the cause of, any infection in an infant, as three medical/statistics experts have affirmed .

The Orthodox community’s final crime, in the Beinart courtroom, is having voted in large numbers, and in contrast to the larger Jewish community, for the man currently occupying the White House. Judge Beinart chooses to interpret that fact as the result of Orthodox anti-Muslim sentiment.

Might it be, though, that many haredim simply recognize that judicial appointments comprise one of the most influential powers any president has? And felt that Mr. Trump’s likely choices would prove more sensitive to our community’s concerns about societal issues and the potential erosion of religious rights in America?

We must plead guilty – forgive us – to the charges of being social conservatives and religious rights activists. But not to Mr. Beinart’s ugly and incendiary charge.